


Before Midgard

by QueenoftheFriendzone



Category: The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Gen, Loki Angst, Loki is not really mentally stable, Mind Control, Pre-Avengers (2012), brief descriptions of torture, but only slightly - Freeform, give me tag ideas, obscure references to Asgard, really brief, the shtick with the mind gem, when Loki's in the Void, you know
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-09-24
Updated: 2016-09-24
Packaged: 2018-08-17 02:55:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,160
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8127671
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/QueenoftheFriendzone/pseuds/QueenoftheFriendzone
Summary: "There is darkness all around him now, a heavy weight, like gauze, pressing against him from all sides, pushing against his skin, a writhing dark mass that threatens to suffocate him. He wouldn’t mind the suffocation, he thinks. It feels like the iron collar around his neck, like ice cold hands that wrap around his throat in a mockery of an embrace, ready to wring the life out of him at a command." Or: In the case where Loki was also a victim of mind control, what happened just before he came through the portal?





	

**Author's Note:**

> Yo it's like 4am and I couldn't sleep because ~anxiety~ and ~college interview~ so I just spent the entire night finishing up this.
> 
> I wanted to try writing something Margaret Atwood style, because we're studying her works in literature class. Loki seemed to be in the perfect situation for that. Also, it's probably not Margaret Atwood style though, because I succeed more at making crude mockeries of things, rather than appreciating them.
> 
> Nevertheless, I tried. Please don't kill me. Or sue me, for that matter.
> 
> On another note, I genuinely intended for this fic to go on for another thirty chapters or so, but I haven't written them because Real Life (TM) is a bitch. And this was an experimental fic. I guess I'll see the reception to this one before continuing it.
> 
> Hope you enjoy it!

Loki wakes. He is lying on something hard that has been covered with cloth. Rock, most likely. It is uneven, and hard points nudge against his side and back. Fingers probing. His head aches and throbs with pain, so he raises a hand to rub it away. Something clinks. Metal upon metal, a weight upon his wrist.  
  
Dread pools in his gut. He freezes, then bows his head in resignation. It seems that he has failed once again. Like all other times before.  
  
Before, when there was light and shining gold to hide the dark, when there was warmth to hide the cold, when there was love to hide the hate. Before is a dream, something unattainable, After is reality, and there is no truly escaping reality. Not when reality stinks of Death.  
  
There is darkness all around him now, a heavy weight, like gauze, pressing against him from all sides, pushing against his skin, a writhing dark mass that threatens to suffocate him. He wouldn’t mind the suffocation, he thinks. It feels like the iron collar around his neck, like ice cold hands that wrap around his throat in a mockery of an embrace, ready to wring the life out of him at a command. Would it be painful to go like that? He is afraid of pain.  
  
He can’t see, but he feels, hands crawling around him, touching, skimming the ground. The chains laugh a tinkling laughter as he moves. He knows they laugh at his helplessness. A king, they cheer, all hail the fool who though himself king! He laughs with them, a rasping, choking laughter. It is true. He is a fool.  
  
Something catches on the side of his finger, tearing into it. He flinches, snatching his finger back to cradle it, then feels ashamed for his display of weakness. He reminds himself that there is no one to watch him. Still, there is a weight on his back, like eyes, or bandages. Something wet and warm trickles down his finger and the coppery tang of blood fills the air. Distantly, he wonders if there are le-matya on this world, and if there are any near him. They are attracted to the smell of blood, he read once in one of the forbidden books in the library, Before. Perhaps they will be attracted to his.  
  
He wonders about his fate. The penalty for an attempted escape is severe. They told it to him on his first day here. They showed him. Resistance is futile, the guards repeated, over and over like a duplication spell gone wrong, He will always find you. Your life as it has been is over, Loki silently corrected him (it?) in his head. The correct quote didn’t matter for the prisoner being executed, and it mattered very little to Loki after he’d emptied his already empty stomach afterwards. He had felt fear many times Before; this was the first time After. It was a different kind of fear. He wonders what they will do to him and if it will be as horrible as it looked.  
  
The darkness brings imaginations of the unknown and the fear amplifies them. Each breath thuds to the ground, loud, like footsteps. His skin crawls, as if some phantom ghosted over it, leaving chills in its path. He swipes at it. The chain jangles and he freezes in terror. His neck prickles, stronger, faster, there is something behind him ohnornspleaseNO!  
  
With a sudden rush of fear, he spins, thrusts his hand forward, intent on conjuring a flame.  
  
No flame. Only pain. Blinding pain. White-hot pain that lights every nerve in him on fire.  
  
There is a horrible bellowing noise, like a raging bull, a trapped animal. He realises belatedly that the noise is coming from his mouth.  
  
Panic and fear crash over him. They are frenzied waves that drag him under, leap down his throat and force tears from his eyes. They are restraints, twining ever tighter around his head body neck arms wrists, burning and choking him.  
  
There is a faint clinking, he notices. His hands are trembling. His breathing is ragged.  
  
Where am I? He wants to scream. What have you done to me? There is no answer except the silence. It mocks him. He knows it, too, laughs.

 

* * *

 

  
He waits in the darkness, fingers twisting at his shackles.  
  
Creaak creeak.  
  
How long has it been since he was first brought here? A week? Months? Years? It is impossible to tell. The days have blended and blurred together. Written memories that have been smudged and soaked until the ink runs and nothing remains.  
  
Time is fluid in this place.  
  
He hasn’t seen the sun in a long time. A long, long time. It has been four hundred and seventy-two meals since his first. This is not an accurate measure of time. He does not get fed often.  
  
It seems like only yesterday that they fell.  
It was a glorious fall, a cascade full of shadow and golden glitter and red red red.  
  
There was so much red.  
  
There were red streaks and red smells, brilliant and vibrant, like a rose with its petals unfurling, its delicate thorns, its cloying scent. Like poison.  
A beautiful splash across the black, starless sky. Red…and silver?  
  
Red and silver.  
  
Loki frowns. Why was there silver? There was no silver there. Gold was always more precious, more appreciated. He knows this. He knows this how?  
  
The memory does not come to him.  
  
Slowly, he settles back into dullness, the rhythmic creaking wrapping around his head like soothing fog, lulling him gently into oblivion.  
  
He hums, gently. He used to hum to pass the time. Fragments of tunes picked up from bards visiting the palace, melodies sung by acclaimed ljosalfar musicians, and lost pieces rescued from Midgard’s carelessness. Time does not exist, not anymore.  
  
He hums. A la-ti-la triplet, followed by a D-major arpeggio in second position. The notes tumble from his lips haphazardly, and a semi-corporeal tune dances in the air, as if made of fog and smoke, barely there. This piece he learnt nearly a century ago, when it was first performed. Bryllupsdag på Troldhaugen: written for joy and well-wishing, back when such things existed.  
  
Ti, then fa-sol…sol sharp? Loki does not know if the notes are right. He can’t remember. Such songs are no longer allowed, especially the ones that reek of happiness. They are dangerous, the Master told him, songs like these only lead to death and destruction. The Master smells of death and destruction. Loki continues to hum.  
  
…do-re-do…  
  
…la-sol-ti-re…  
  
Time drifts. His fingers cease to continue their relentless revolutions around cold metal.  
  
Creaak creeak.  
  
The creaking noise is not coming from his chains.  
  
He lifts his head in fright. A useless gesture, with the darkness that he lives in. It is a desperate gesture.  
  
A crash. A bang. There is now a rectangle of blinding light in the wall facing him. A humanoid figure, shadowed and large, stands in the middle with a stick in his (its?) left hand.  
  
Loki hums. Fa, ti-do, he is not afraid, re-mi-ti-do, he will not surrender, re-mi-ti –  
  
The shadowed figure reaches out a large hand and the tune falters, quivers, then fractures into a thousand crystal splinters. Loki has only enough time to berate himself for weakness before burning pain splits his side and he screams. The pain is an eternity and the world is a flashing kaleidoscope of yellow, and red and black. Then the agonizer is removed and Loki collapses bonelessly onto the ground, sobbing.  
  
“Silence,” says the Other brusquely. Despite the haze of pain, Loki recognizes his jailer. The Other is the only one with four thumbs and a glittery golden cage over his face. It is not too different from and equally painful as the last golden cage Loki had lived in. But unlike the last cage, he has neither the illusion of freedom nor the comfort of Her understanding. Here, however, he does not have their hate or their prejudice. Both are equally bad, he thinks. Both are equally good.  
  
The Chitauri guards at the door converge on him like dogs on a bone. They do not speak. It is against their programming, even if they were not made that way. The Master had the Other change it. The guards unchain his cuffs from the wall and immediately fasten his hands together with a chain twice as thick. He notes the speed at which they restrain him. He had attempted escape once, when they had assumed a magicless Loki was a helpless Loki. They gag him this time, too. It is a metal mouthpiece, delicately runed and intricately embellished. Nauthiz reversed, Tiwaz reversed, Isa. Restriction, silence, reinforcement.  
  
“Fit for a king,” the Other mocks, when he sees Loki staring at the gold detailing. Loki grinds his teeth and bites back a scathing retort only because the gag is already on. They both know the Other would lose otherwise.  
  
The guards lead him out of his cell. In the light, he can tell that the cuffs are tarnished gold and the wall a sickly silver. Perhaps he is fated to spend his life surrounded by precious things, if only to make apparent his worthlessness. He stumbles along the magelight-lit corridor.

  
They take him to the Master. The One who conquers, the One who reigns, the One who giveth and taketh away. Indeed, giving and taking is everything the Master does. He gives pain, and takes lives, and Loki knows this more dearly than anyone.  
  
The throne room contains a throne but no room. A peculiar name then, made more peculiar by the being on the throne. It sits against the backdrop of a black night and a thousand stars, wrinkled, bright purple and fifty feet high, triumphantly wearing a glittering gold glove. In another world, Loki might have found humor in such a overtly pompous, grandiose illusion of paradise, formed uselessly in nothingness, beyond the farthest branches of the Yggdrasil. But this is not another world. This is not a better or happier world where his tremors spring from laughter.  
  
"Kneel," commands the Other.  
  
Kneel, like he had Before. Kneel, to convey a respect which he does not feel. Kneel, to display subservience to one who does not deserve it. Kneel, because he was weak.  
  
It is abhorrent.  
  
But Loki is abhorrent too. It is fact. Loki drops to the ground, kneecaps striking the rough rocks loudly, obediently. Or merely because his strength, weakened by continuous pain, could no longer support him. Nonetheless, Loki knows he will not be rising any time soon.  
  
"Are you willing?" the Master asks. His voice grates painfully, a thunderous cascade of grainy sand and gravel. A stone shifts painfully beneath his knee, but Loki does not move.  
  
He has been asked this question too many times. The meaning has long been forgotten, like a dash of salt that has been dissolved and diluted a thousand times over, until it is impossible to tell what there was in the beginning. Loki said no in the beginning. What does he say now, to answer a meaningless question?  
  
No seems like a good place to start. He says so.  
  
He has forgotten too fast the following agony that rips his consciousness apart.  
  
Again.  
  
And again.  
  
And again.  
  
Are you willing?  
  
... _yes_...

  
Barely a sigh. What is he agreeing to? The answer escapes him.  
  
"The sceptre," the Master commands.  
  
Through the haze of red, Loki sees a Chitauri step forward and present the Master a short spear.  
  
Instead, the Other picks it up and raises it's glowing tip to Loki's chest.  
  
His vision bursts white.  
  
Burning pain and cool relief crash onto him. His heart is beating fit to burst, his breath comes in gasps, his mind is being stretched every which way and another hundred more. He wants to cry and scream and laugh and beg all at the same time in a fit of passionate live and violent hate and every emotion in between.  
  
Tendrils of bright blue creep into the red.  
  
Icy, they leave a numb emptiness where they touched. Like silk ribbons, they coil around him, in him, reigning in the storm.  
  
An emotion rises above the turmoil. _Loyalty_.  
  
He kneels. Bows his head. He wants desperately to please the being before him. It feels strangely familiar, but he knows he has never felt loyalty as strong as this towards anyone.  
  
Cold metal is pressed into his hand.  
  
Through the gentle haze of blue, Loki hears the Master ask, "And what news of the Cube?"  
  
"The Tesseract has awakened, my lord," says the Other, "It is on a little world. A human world. They would wield its power, but our...ally knows its workings as they never will. He is ready to lead. And our force, our Chitauri, will follow. The world will be his. The universe yours. And the humans, what can they do but burn?" 

**Author's Note:**

> The song Loki was humming was Grieg's Wedding at Troldhaugen, by the way. It a really nice song imo.  
> If anyone's curious, he's supposed to go through the Tesseract-portal right after this. That's what I planned, at least.  
> Did anyone spot like the million and one Star Trek references? Actually I think there were only three but whatever.
> 
> ...well?
> 
> Did you like it? :DDD
> 
> Feel free to leave kudos or comments with love or constructive criticism if you did!


End file.
